During my second go ‘round at Anomaly I was in more of a leadership role and found myself thinking about casual racism a lot more. Trayvon Martin had been murdered the year before, Eric Garner was murdered soon after, and Black Lives Matter was pushing the discussion onto a more National scale.

The sort of casual racism that I was accustomed to in all aspects of my life was beginning to bother me more. I was becoming more aware of not just the ways in which micro aggressions affected people emotionally, but also how they served to create subtle but powerful boundaries between those in power and those not in power.

As I became more responsible for others, I saw that many of the people I managed were casually racist towards each other as well as hindered or damaged by the casual racism they experienced themselves. I saw that to properly manage these people, I would need to address the way we all communicated with each other. But most were unaware of their own racism, and as always, people struggle to accept and internalize the ways that they hurt others.

So I created the “Racist of the Day” Awards. A casual system in which people on my team could nominate others (or themselves) to win “Racist of the Day” for saying or doing things they felt were racist: microaggressions, or more blatantly offensive behavior. At the end of the day, we would review the nominations and I would select a Racist of the Day.

To some this may seem like celebrating racism, but it was actually a way to make calling out racism less difficult. It allowed people to actively consider if theirs or others’ behavior was problematic, and comfortably call that behavior out without fear of repercussions for themselves or offending the offender. Since so many were unaware of their own transgressions, “Racist of the Day” became an effective way to self-evaluate and self-regulate.

I know that to some the “Racist of the Day” awards may seem permissive, or apologetic, but I can say this: It worked pretty well. We called out racism every day. And I’ve still to this day never worked with a team that was more comfortable addressing their own blind spots. It even got to the point where people who were not part of my team became comfortable calling others out for being the “racist of the day”.